Ruritan romance

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Ruritan romances are adventure novels which are set in a fictional, small, aristocratically ruled Central European country and deal with intrigue, love stories and often the restoration of lawful order.

The essential elements of the genre were shaped by the novel The Prisoner of Zenda by the British Anthony Hope, located in the fantasy land of Ruritania . The novel published in 1894, its follow-up volumes and many of the works inspired by it, including the “Graustark” novels by George Barr McCutcheon , were very popular in the English-speaking world in the first half of the 20th century. The ruritan style elements were soon parodied widely or taken up in other genres and media, for example in Hergé's comic King Ottokar's Scepter (1938) or in the film The Marx Brothers at War (1933).

After the Second World War, ruritan romances were less in demand, among other things because the small monarchies and principalities that characterized the genre had largely disappeared from the memory of Europeans. Ruritan motifs were and are still used as a style element, e.g. B. in the comic QRN calls Bretzelburg by André Franquin (1961) or in the novel and radio play The Silver Spider by Robert Arthur (1981).

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